The Workstation

Two points to make here:

One is that even though this laptop is almost three years old, it still looks new - both in terms of design and condition. Not only that but it just cranks through everything that I throw at it. Gigantic 1 gig, 20+file panoramas, no problemo. Having a dozen ridiculously resource-heavy apps running at once, no problemo. It's amazing.

The second point is that I remember saying, somewhere around 2000 or so, that the real issue with running out of oil, or running out of cheap, easy to extract oil, is not that we won't be able to cruise the strip in our stupid, lumbering, ugly, egotistical SUVs anymore but it's that there are a whole host of things that are made from petroleum products and they are going to have to be rethought, get more expensive or just disappear.

The specific example I gave at the time was computers, I asked "are we going to be making our keyboards out of aluminum?"

Well, now my keyboardis almost all aluminum. As are my laptop casing and my monitor casing. In fact, Apple's entire lineup is almost entirely recyclable aluminum. Very cool. I had asked a rhetorical question and now, here it is.

As a side note, it occurred to me, that the two most likely reasons that people discard their keyboards are that a key is broken or that it is so grimy and disgusting that they just want to get a new one - and the overwhelming reason PC users seem to get a new keyboard is that windows is so clogged up with spyware, viruses and crap that it's just easier to get a whole new computer; that's what bad design will get you. The new thin aluminum keyboards don't seem likely to have a sticky key problem and are extremely easy to clean. That is what good design will get you.

The Workstation

Two points to make here:

One is that even though this laptop is almost three years old, it still looks new - both in terms of design and condition. Not only that but it just cranks through everything that I throw at it. Gigantic 1 gig, 20+file panoramas, no problemo. Having a dozen ridiculously resource-heavy apps running at once, no problemo. It's amazing.

The second point is that I remember saying, somewhere around 2000 or so, that the real issue with running out of oil, or running out of cheap, easy to extract oil, is not that we won't be able to cruise the strip in our stupid, lumbering, ugly, egotistical SUVs anymore but it's that there are a whole host of things that are made from petroleum products and they are going to have to be rethought, get more expensive or just disappear.

The specific example I gave at the time was computers, I asked "are we going to be making our keyboards out of aluminum?"

Well, now my keyboardis almost all aluminum. As are my laptop casing and my monitor casing. In fact, Apple's entire lineup is almost entirely recyclable aluminum. Very cool. I had asked a rhetorical question and now, here it is.

As a side note, it occurred to me, that the two most likely reasons that people discard their keyboards are that a key is broken or that it is so grimy and disgusting that they just want to get a new one - and the overwhelming reason PC users seem to get a new keyboard is that windows is so clogged up with spyware, viruses and crap that it's just easier to get a whole new computer; that's what bad design will get you. The new thin aluminum keyboards don't seem likely to have a sticky key problem and are extremely easy to clean. That is what good design will get you.